Community service isn't something that some of us see in our communities and societies, and maybe in the parts of the world we come from as a whole. This is true and an indicator that this isn't practised and probably not even considered in our societies when it should be something that's highly encouraged and people are actively involved in it. Community services go a long way to impact and help societies.
Not just societies are impacted by these services but even the people carrying them out. It's an effort to build society but also the individual, to understand that considering others through willful, good and positively impacting services is also part of life; that you don't live for yourself alone, but consider your society and offer productive service to humanity, and community service is one basic and simple way to go about that.
It's not a common thing or practice among some people and communities, societies or even countries. Perhaps, we can say the government don't really value it and sees it as a necessary practice that should be seen in communities. Nevertheless, we have it as an obligation as a people. Hence, we see Non-governmental Organisations (NGOs) playing this role and influencing several people into different community services in various ways.
It could be cleaning or offering other forms of services meant to help and impact people and societies. Some come as projects while others as basic services. It's funny to find that the idea or practice of community service that many of us might have seen and understood is that which offenders of the law were mandated to do as a punishment for their wrong, to also have them serve the community and develop some sense of responsibility through that.
This seems like a good way to be punished for some offences. Community service in the general sense should be a sense of responsibility and willingness to serve humanity and impact the community. It becomes something to consider and assess when this is enforced in some way; say high school students are required to perform community service before their graduation, with failure to do so meaning they forfeit graduation.
What will be the impact of this; will it teach the students what it means to be selfless or produce something otherwise? It would be a good thing to have students learning what it means to be selfless through community service. Making it part of the system and curriculum would inculcate the value and true essence of what community service is in the hearts and minds of these young students right early, and towards a purposeful endeavour in that regard.
The problem is, making it mandatory for graduation could yield students who don't even care about community service and don't understand what it truly means, yet participate in it just to graduate. This is common among students with the things they don't care about so they just do it to pass. Rather than going that route, this can be introduced early to students as an extracurricular activity with a sense of importance attached in some way, not necessarily using graduation against them.
Image is AI-generated.
